In a conventional inkjet printing device, an ink cartridge disposed on a supporting mechanism is moved back and forth along a horizontal direction by a moving mechanism. The ready-to-print paper is driven by a paper transfer mechanism to be transferred along a path under the ink cartridge along a vertical direction. After the ink within the ink cartridge is ejected onto a surface of the paper through an inkjet head, a print job is implemented. For printing out a required graphic/text manuscript, the inkjet head has to be moved back and forth and the paper has to be moved. Due to the limitations of the moving time and the accelerating/decelerating time, the printing speed of the conventional inkjet head is usually in the range between 30-35 PPM (pages per minute). In addition, it is difficult to increase the printing speed.
Since the conventional printing mechanism uses a simple supporting mechanism to fix the whole ink cartridge, move the ink cartridge and communicate with the inkjet printing device, the printing time and the print medium are restricted. For complying with diverse size of the print media and increasing the convenience and efficiency of the printing process, a page-width printing platform has been disclosed.
The conventional page-width printing platform has a fixed supporting platform. Moreover, the printing platform has a nozzle array with a width larger than or equal to that of the ready-to-print paper. The paper transferred through the path under the nozzle array is directly printed by the nozzle array. Under this circumstance, the printing platform is operated in a page-width array mode. In the page-width array mode, a plurality of inkjet chips are arranged at the bottom of the supporting mechanism of the printing platform, and thus the convenience and efficiency of the printing process will be enhanced. However, the printing platform in a page-width array mode still has the following drawbacks.
Firstly, since the inkjet chips are arranged at the bottom of the supporting mechanism of the printing platform, if one of the inkjet chips has a breakdown, the overall printing performance is deteriorated. Since the inkjet chip fails to be individually replaced with a new one, the whole printing platform should be replaced.
Secondly, for transferring the ink to the ink reservoirs which are in fluid communication with various inkjet chips, the page-width array printing platform should have complicated ink supply channels. Under this circumstance, the designing cost and the fabricating cost are both increased.
Thirdly, for fabricating the page-width array printing platform, it is necessary to successively install inkjet chips on the bottom of the supporting mechanism. Under this circumstance, the process of installing the controlling contacts becomes complicated, and thus the fabricating time and the fabricating cost are both increased.
Therefore, there is a need of providing an improved page-width array printing device in order to eliminate the above drawbacks.